Pieces of Silver
by AmeliaGallifrey
Summary: Summer, 1979. As the war climbs towards its inevitable denouement, the Order of the Phoenix gathers for the breaking of bread. Originally written for the prompt 'Minerva McGonagall - A Handful of Coins' on the LiveJournal community first order.


Title: Pieces of Silver

Character/s: Minerva McGonagall, the first Order of the Phoenix

Rating: PG

Warning: Contains spoilers, up to and including OOTP

Word Count:

Disclaimer: Anything recognisable is the property of JK Rowling and, erm, the Catholic Church.

Summary: As the war climbs toward its inevitable denouement, the Order of the Phoenix gathers for the breaking of bread.

Prompt: Written for first_order's As Summer Ends challenge, Week 2. Prompt was _Minerva McGonagall/A Handful of Coins._

Summer hangs, fragrant and pastel-coloured, in the air over the small, rambling garden, and Minerva's heart beats its flighty flutter in her chest as the guests begin to arrive. Albus, with a gentle touch to her elbow, presses a goblet of the elf-made wine into her hand, and slips around her, making his way with opened arms down the garden path.

They arrive in twos and threes; Arthur and Molly, somehow free for the time being of their growing regiment of redheaded boys. Frank and Alice, fresh-faced and golden from a quick week in Spain. They pass from Albus's arms into her own, and Minerva finds her hands clasping a tighter grip upon each of them that she had intended. Conversation chimes around the little garden, and Albus is boundlessly cheerful and witty as ever; his good spirits jarring roughly against the doubt that tugs incessantly within her.

Alastor arrives with Kingsley Shacklebolt, his young protégé, and it aches, to look too closely upon the two of them; Shacklebolt is broad, open-faced and radiating youthful strength, while Alastor stoops and glowers beside him, irreparably damaged and furious at fate. Minerva presses her eyes shut against the contrast, as the two Aurors drop light kisses to her chilled cheek.

As the small, incomplete party awaits the remainder of their number, Albus moves among them, passing out goblets brimful of the rich, jammy wine, and with each sip she takes Minerva feels the viscous substance sear the lining of her throat, turning her empty, gnawing stomach. The cloying, doubting fear has been dogging her heels for months, now, and it is something she has, with the passage of time, grown almost accustomed to. Where once it was violent in its clamouring for her attention, it is now somehow complacent, docile as a sleepy child, and she finds she can now twine her fingers through it and lead it into the darkened, quiet recesses where her mind steps only infrequently. Some new strength of will, learnt in the face of war, it seems, has enabled her to shift it gently aside and conceal it behind a low wall in her heart, to be loosened only in the quiet hours of night when none can hear how it ravages her. She does this small act now; sipping quietly from her goblet and watching the young men and women who are still so much her students, talking in lilting, hopeful voices.

There is a flurry of sudden movement in the lane, and soon a raucous gaggle of scruffy boys appears at the gate. Black, Lupin and Pettigrew; dressed in what Minerva assumes to be the Muggle fashions of the day, laugh and jostle one another as the tangles of their overlong hair fly about their faces, lifted by the warm breeze. Behind them, limbs entwined and faces well-freckled from sun, follow James and Lily Potter, and Minerva feels the same familiar rush of fondness for her former charges. It is Sirius Black, utterly handsome and emanating cheerful wickedness, who lopes down the path in three strides, his arms outstretched in her direction.

"Mister Black."

Despite the fear, her constant, quiet companion, she cannot help the vaguely disapproving smile from shifting across her face as the tall, lean young man enfolds her in an enthusiastic embrace.

"Hullo, Minerva!"

His grin is so bright, face so open and gleaming with mischief that she allows the cheekily wilful greeting to slip by undisciplined. The others, Lupin and Pettigrew, follow suit, although both remain circumspect enough to use her old school title in greeting, whilst Black grins wickedly on.

"Hello, boys."

They are both taller than she, now; and Lupin's soft jaw-line is concealed in a new growth of downy golden beard. They look well, the three of them, her heart is relieved to note, and as they slip from her touch into Albus's nearby embrace, the Potters disentangle themselves and approach, a sweet, rose-coloured blush creeping over Lily's pale face.

"It's lovely to see you, Professor." The girl's touch is almost intolerably gentle, her russet hair carrying the scent of her namesake flower, and she smiles sweetly under Minerva's gaze.

"Lily, James."

The boy – her husband, now – is flushed an equal pink, his glasses slipping to a precarious point near the end of his nose. A fresh flutter unsettles her heart once more, as Minerva watches him replay the very same gesture she remembers from his childhood; shoving the frames impatiently back into position, he tosses a lock of gleaming hair from his eyes with a lopsided, amused grin. She cannot help holding the two of them at arms' length, for a brief, indulgent moment, until Albus steps beside her and claims them for his own arms.

Dusk begins to fall as the party takes their seats, and the subtle order to the seating plan would pass by unnoticed to most, but Minerva has known Albus for forty of her fifty years, now; far too long to believe any act of his to be the work of mere chance.

The long, heavily-laden table perches ungainly on the uneven lawn, beneath the sweeping stretch of an ancient willow, and Albus himself takes his place in a high-backed chair, to preside like a lord over his assembled court. Alastor, thankfully, is out of her earshot down the opposite end, with Lupin and Black already entranced by some tale or other of his memory, or perhaps creation, Peter's rapt face fixed across the table in their direction. The Potters are settled beside one another, fingers entwined on the table-top, in the throes of holiday chatter with Frank and Alice. In the seat beside Minerva's, Arthur recounts a story of his eldest son and an ill-advised camping trip, while Molly sighs good-naturedly on, and Kingsley, at Albus's immediate left, looks briefly across the table to meet her eye, a quick, easy smile gracing his features, as Arthur delivers his punch-line.

Her nerves begin to settle, as the wine does its intended work of numbing the clawing doubt and trepidation within her, until Albus sets his goblet gently down and clears his throat.

It's something she has long admired in him; the ability to command, with no visible effort at all, the attention of a chattering crowd. Twelve heads swivel inexorably in his direction, and Minerva folds her hands very carefully in her lap, the sickening anxiety welling within her once more, as Albus begins his loosely prepared address.

"I'm so very thankful that you could all accept my invitation today. I know we all have duties to uphold, and indeed, some of us have young families to attend to." Beside her, Minerva feels Arthur's quiet movement, and she can sense, without so much as a glance, the bright smile as it moves across his gentle face.

"However, each and every one of us is aware of the importance of the task to hand."

Minerva feels her attention waver as he continues; the doubt looming within her, in anticipation of what is to come. She casts a quick glance around the table, and amongst the enthralled faces it seems only Alastor shares her distraction; the smile, if one could name it as such, is grim as it twists in his face, and the old guilt tugs wearily at her. It is a brief struggle, against the weight of memory and the burden of their shared history, before Albus's careful, considered voice regains her attention.

"This is not a new conversation, my friends. Some of us have faced the darkness before; we have fought against powers we could not hope to name, and in the battle we have lost many of our number."

He gives an eloquent pause, and all around her Minerva feels the gaze of every gathered soul fall to their plates, leaving her alone to stare blankly into the pink and peach sky. She cannot think of names or faces, anymore; when she does, the images appear sepia-stained as old photographs, devoid of the memory of liveliness, and the words are etched in gold and bronze upon old granite, in crumbling cemetery rows in her mind. There have been too many lost, and Minerva allows the sheer beauty of the sun, setting in the watercolour sky, to wash away the rolling wave of grief that moves through her, leaving in its wake the soft, tender places within her mottled and bruised. When she looks down, away from the sky, she finds the eyes of both Albus and Kingsley hovering quietly over her face.

"Some among us, however, are too young to remember how it feels, when darkness threatens to drown us within its depths.

I have asked all of you here today, young and... not so young, alike-" a light titter of amusement rings gently around the table, "-because I have seen, in the years I have known each of you, the burning, consuming desire for good, alive and fighting within every last one of you. Some of you are brilliant, some fearlessly brave... all of you are in possession of that very same unswerving, unforgiving sense of fairness, of what is right and wrong, which haunts my own long and tedious nights. And yet, I have not asked all of you here today to lavish glowing praise upon you.

"The thing we face, the threat we stare down, is war. There is darkness on the move throughout our world, and I know each and every one of you here today has faced their own great dangers. It is a battle we are fighting. This is no clash of words or mere ideology; this is war, and war is terrible and brutal and horribly, horribly final. We may not have great numbers in our command, we may not make use of the darkest magic in our endeavours, but we have, in our grasp, the strongest weapon a warrior could ever hope to wield.

"Each one of you has sworn your allegiance to my Order. Each one of you has made a solemn vow, to fight for what is good and right and true, and to uphold your loyalty to this cause in my name. I ask you, now, to make yet another oath.

"It is not enough, not nearly enough, to swear you allegiance in remembrance of me. There will come a time when I no longer walk among you, and if your commitment dies with me, then all I have done, all I have sought to achieve will die alongside me, in vain.

"I ask you, today, to swear your loyalty instead to one another. When we stand, united, in the face of darkness and fear, the light of justice will fall over us, and from it we may draw our strength. If one among us falters, all will falter. If one among us is untrue, we are all betrayed. The fates will show no mercy, no mercy at all, to the man who turns against his fellows. We must stand, as one, against the dark, for if we are unfaithful to one another, we will surely fail."

Albus falls silent, and Minerva feels his gaze sweep, burning and hard and searching, over the table. Nearby, Molly shifts imperceptibly, and when Minerva lifts her eyes to look it is fear, a disgusted horror, that contorts the usually warm face. Minerva glances quickly around; almost every face she finds wears a frozen, matching mask. It is the closest Albus would ever come to an open accusation of treason, and even though she had known it was coming, the sheer brutality of it does not fail to send a thrill of shock through her frame. Her eyes move almost of their own accord to Alastor, and he amongst them does not share the horrified shock; he is scowling a black, bloody murder across the table in Albus's direction. As Minerva turns away, her fingers begin to tremble where they close around her goblet.

The tremor does not subside until long after the meal is finished, and the speech somehow forgotten, for the moment. Minerva rises with others, leaving Albus hunched together with Alastor and Kingsley, lost to a deep discussion. She walks the ramshackle garden path, leading her former students as she has done in the years before, as the fear tightens its grip in a fist around her stomach. She embraces them each in turn at the gate, and watches as the Weasleys and the Longbottoms Disapparate from among the shadows in the lane. Lily and James return her embrace with an almost equal fierceness, and something aching within her heart is pulled taut as the boy tucks his arm around his young wife's shoulders.

Lupin's pale face is earnest as he wishes her farewell, but Black is still grinning, still carried away with his own mischief, as she kisses his cheek.

"Sleep tight, Minerva," he mutters, close to her ear, and she resists the temptation to swat his arm, suddenly immensely thankful for the boys' unending joviality. Pettigrew, eyes still fixed on Black and grinning at his friend's fresh display of mischief, leans quickly into her embrace, and presses a light, soft-lipped kiss to her cheek. He is still smiling as she releases him from her embrace, and in the movement Minerva hears the delicate, chiming sound of tinkling metal. Coins, she thinks absently; the boy must have a handful of Sickles tucked in some out-of-sight pocket. Pettigrew slips from her hands, and follows his friends through the gate, into the darkening shadows of the lane.


End file.
